Tips to finding the best web hosting service for your business

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Now you have decided to launch that blog, or maybe float your company’s website, finding the best hosting provider is the next hurdle to cross.

Let’s face it: deciding which web hosting service provider to work with can be tricky. You sure do want a hosting package that is safe, secured, fast and affordable at the same time. C’mon, who doesn’t want more for less! The good news is that you can have them all.

Here are important factors to take cognizance of before deciding which hosting company to work with.

#1. Estimate size of traffic to your blog/website

Say you wanna set up a blog which will be monetized via ads. The best strategy, in this instance, is to attract hundreds of thousands of monthly visits to your blog. To that end, you will have to purchase a hosting package with large bandwidth capable of handling high traffic surge.

On the other hand, if your business carters to local customers, traffic to your website will be low, so what you need is a hosting package with low bandwidth.

Mind you, higher bandwidth means higher hosting subscriptions, and vice versa. So, it pays to know what you are getting into to avoid throwing away money.

#2. Check Hosting cost

If you are just starting out with website hosting, the tendency to settle for incredibly cheap hosting service is very high.

While there is nothing really wrong with looking out for the cheap deals, features that come with a hosting package should outrank hosting cost on your priority list.

Settling for hosting service that cost a little more than $1 per month won’t cut it. From experience, you will either end up spending more money on upgrades, or loss business due to frequent downtimes.

Ideally, hosting cost within the bracket of $2.5 and $3.5 is a good fit.

#3. Check Server reliability

Your website will be hosted on an online server which needs to be up and running on 24/7 basis. A small downtime of even an hour can cost you a lot, so you would want to avoid that.

So, before deciding on the hosting company to work with, check to see their uptime score. Anything north of 99.5% is good.

You can use My hosting up time, a free web tool, to check up on the uptime score of a web hosting company.

#4. Check Customer Support

Your website can suddenly develop technical glitches. While some technical problems can be easily handled from your own end, there are some that can only be handled by the hosting company.

Every good hosting provider offers support to their customers on 24/7 basis. As a rule, if you can’t reach the company at any time of the day, or reach them only to be answered by a bot, take your money elsewhere.

In fact, you would be better off dealing with hosting companies that allow you reach their customer support agent via live chat. This at least ensures you don’t waste money on phone calls.

#5. Check customer review

Ever bought an item before on Amazon? Bet you checked customer reviews about the product before making a purchase. Purchasing a hosting service shouldn’t be any different.

You can either look them up on review forum sites, or sneak them up on social media platforms to see what past customers are saying about them.

#6. Check scalability

Never underestimate your blog/website. The fact that you are barely getting 100 visits a month now does not mean the situation will stay the same forever.

What would happen if traffic to your site suddenly grows to hundreds of thousands on monthly basis? Will your hosting company be able to accommodate the surge in traffic? If they can’t, look elsewhere. It is better to take the pain now than be sorry later.

Final thoughts

Starting a blog can be an exciting experience. To prevent that excitement from turning to horror, it is best to take your time now to find the best web hosting service provider.